Wait 'Til Next Year

Let's Get Efficient!

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I don't think it's a stretch to say that college baseball is an offense-oriented game: the ping of the ball off of the bat testifies to that. There have been great strides made in reducing the number of games ending in football scores-only five times did a team score in double digits in Omaha-but as I watched the 19-10 slug-fest in Game Two of the College World Series championship, it was a frustrating reminder of how easily aluminum can shrink a ballpark.

Fresno State's national championship, however-and Oregon State's before that-says something about recent college baseball victors. It certainly helps you get to Omaha if you can swing the bat like Miami or Florida State did in 2008, but big offenses have not been what has defined the champions in recent history. Anyone who watched Tommy Mendonca and Justin Wilson last June knows the kind of effect that good pitching and defense can have in a college contest.

It's that latter notion, the defense, that I concerned myself with this offseason. Statistical transparency has thankfully gotten better in college baseball in the past few years, and, with some digging, there is now access to a far wider range of metrics than ever before. It's easy to identify the top pitching staffs; hell, just find a copy of North Carolina's 2008 numbers. To identify the top fielding teams, though... that's not so easy, at least not if you know enough to discredit the idea that fielding percentage is the end-all indicator of a team's defensive abilities. The NCAA lays that out in a nice, accessible table:

That's all well and good, I suppose, but there's a lot of noise in those numbers-one coach told me last year that at certain ballparks there are scorekeepers who refuse to call errors on their home squad-and, to be honest, I can't put much stock in a statistic where eight-thousandths of a percent separate the first-ranked team (Duke) from the 49th (Auburn). Fans of Bill James know that there is a better way; one of his simplest, yet most substantial contributions to sabermetrics is the concept of Defensive Efficiency. It looks complicated written out as a formula, but it's actually as simple as this: what percentage of balls in play are converted into outs? It's the true test of a defense, and this summer I discovered that the numbers necessary to compute DER for college baseball were available for 283 of the 286 Division I teams.

The results in this survey were overwhelming: defense matters a great deal at the college level, and DER is a good tool for measuring defense. Every team in the College World Series in 2008 finished above the Division I average of .617. Seven of the eight CWS teams, including both finalists Fresno State and Georgia, finished in the top 50. Trust me, there are not a lot of statistics out there that can lay that kind of claim, and while only Stanford of all the CWS teams finished in the top ten in fielding percentage, Georgia was close at 12th, and most of the other teams weren't far behind.

How's this for a test? Make an internal list of the top five conferences in college baseball last season. Now take a look at how close they come to the top of the list:

(Please note that my calculation of Defensive Efficiency is the same that BP uses in the MLB Defensive Report, though with one exception: I had to use raw errors rather than ROE. This likely escalated the numbers a bit, but not significantly, and any differences should be spread out evenly across the board.)

I surely would have had the Pac-10 at the top of my list, and that notion is validated here. In 2008, it was the deepest conference in college baseball, and every one of its teams had an argument to make for the post-season group of 64. League Defensive Efficiency leader Washington had a strong resumé, as did league trailer USC. What's most reaffirming about the legitimacy of using Defensive Efficiency for college baseball is that the indisputable top five conferences from last season end up as the top five in this regard as well.

Here is a list of the top 25 teams at converting balls in play into outs in college baseball last season, along with their accompanying 2008 win-loss record.

The top 25 defensive teams in '08 averaged 38 wins versus only 21 losses. Clearly, defense is something that can elevate a team at every level of college play, pushing schools from Canisius to TCU to Michigan ahead of the other members of their respective conferences. It's also a statistic that turns squads that would be decidedly mediocre based only on evaluating their hitting and pitching-Duke and Lafayette, I'm looking at you-and turns them into above-.500 teams.

To speak specifically about the teams on this list, I can personally attest to Georgia's defensive dominance. Gordon Beckham made huge strides in his junior season, and the team opted to forego offense at second base in favor of defense. Add in a third baseman at first base in Rich Poythress, and a trio of rangy outfielders, and their defense pushes them to the next level. South Carolina is another interesting team, as three of their infielders from last year were high draft picks. It's no news that Justin Smoak is a defensive ace, but South Carolina's high ranking also speaks to Reese Havens' and James Darnell's ability to turn grounders to the left side into outs. And remember that with Beckham and the three Gamecock infielders all having since moved on to the pros, there's a lot more than offense that these schools need to worry about replacing.

The rest of the College World Series crew quickly flies off the board, with five more placing between 27th and 33rd, and Fresno State just making the top 50, leaving only one laggard (Rice). I just wonder how much better Rice might have done had they not been the worst team in Omaha (and seventh in the C-USA) at catching the baseball. This is a team that struck out 23 percent of batters faced in 2008. Who knows what moving their Defensive Efficiency from 62 to 65 percent might have done for that pitching staff, not to mention Cole St. Clair's draft stock.

This was perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this research, being faced with cases of what could have been. Missouri could have been a CWS contender with a better defense, but they ranked last in the Big 12 at Defensive Efficiency. I also included USC and Mississippi State on this list, because they were at the bottom of their conferences in Defensive Efficiency, finishing with a combined 51-61 record. And whether it's College of Charleston, New Orleans, or Kent State, there are a host of teams that were a good defense away from that last step up.

The most frustrating team in the nation may have been the New Orleans Privateers. What a run they had in the Sun Belt Conference last year, hitting .321/.409/.528 as a team with six players clubbing at least 10 home runs. Ultimately, the season ended at the hands of Southern Miss in a series that the Privateers should have made more competitive, and on the surface, it looks as if they were dragged down by a pitching staff with a 5.45 ERA, and by players like Justin Garcia, one of the weekend starters (5.77 ERA).

It was Garcia, however, that was the one being victimized. He has a good arm; good enough to earn a spot in professional baseball, and even though the Royals sent him to the hitter-friendly Pioneer League in his first summer in pro ball, he responded with a 3.00 ERA, emerging as a closer with 42 innings of fantastic work. That, mind you, was with an Idaho Falls team that turned balls into outs at a 61.6 percent clip (according to Sean Forman), a percentage point higher than Garcia's college team.

These are just some of the less obvious factors that are worth considering before we dig into the 2009 college landscape. As I move towards previewing the 2009 teams, I need to think about how Georgia will replace Gordon Beckham and Ryan Peisel on their left side, or whether Kent State will defend well enough to take the next step forward. As the tournament nears, I'll need to think about which defenses might step up in the way that Fresno State's did last June. And as the draft nears, we should begin to use this statistic to analyze which pitchers are being undervalued by their surroundings, like Justin Garcia was a year ago.

The 2009 baseball season is just two weeks away, and I'm not talking about pitchers and catchers. We'll preview the NCAA in each of those weeks, never losing sight that there's a new analytical tool at our disposal.

Bryan Smith is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Click here to see Bryan's other articles.
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Good article. Two comments:
-Can you provide a link to the whole list somehow? I think fans of other teams would be interested to see how their team is doing.
-Think you've got a mistake at #3. Washington is .5603, surrounded by teams in the .66 range.

Thanks for pointing out the Washington mistake, I'll have that fixed. They do belong at #3, with a DER of .6702. And as far as the whole list goes, for now, I'd be happy to e-mail anyone the Excel sheet I made ... you know how to reach me.

Excellent stuff. What does it say about Rice's pitching staff when their hitting wasn't spectacular and their defense was craptacular? Any hope my Owls improve this year? Hague and Seastruck on the left side last year made so many errors it made my eyes bleed (and I didn't watch a game until April)!

It says a lot about the Rice pitching staff. Like I mentioned in the article, it's too bad the defense was so poor, because besides a national title, a better group of fielders would have helped guys like Cole St. Clair and Lucas Luetge make a lot more money in the draft. Luetge is a good example of a guy that went to pro ball, pitched in front of a better defense, and saw much better results.

As for this year, I only urge you to check back next week. Just tweaking the top 25 now, and I just finished writing a bit about Rice. I think I'm a touch away from the consensus on them...

Hopefully you are "a touch away from the consensus" in the "right" direction from my perspective!

I think Coach Graham tends to build great teams with guys that aren't necessarily great pro talents. Not that he doesn't get some top HS talents, but I think he really does a phenomenal job of consistently building a good college team without having guys that are necessarily elite professional prospects. Lots of good college guys that aren't super-projectable. From my perspective, they haven't really had an elite college hitter since Crosby/Thames in '98 (and even moreso with Berkman in '97). Guys like Sinisi, Enrique Cruz, and Savery just didn't put up the kind of numbers that you would expect from the best hitter on a top-10 team.

I have no idea why they either can't or don't recruit big boppers. Maybe Hague will be that guy?

Yeah, it did a little bit. I was shocked to see Duke finish at the top in both. I was glad to see that the worst teams in the Fielding Percentage Top 10 -- Western Kentucky, Maryland and Troy -- all dropped significantly in the DER ratings, ranking 146th, 89th and 100th, respectively. I knew there would be some crossover ... in the MLB this year, Fielding Percentage and DEF_EFF shared seven teams in their respective top tens ... but the agreement at the top was indeed surprising. I'll definitely be interested to run the numbers next year and see if it holds true again.

Every time a batter is out on a ball in play (or hits into a FC), it counts the same in DE and in FP -- plus one to both numerator and denominator. Every time a fielder boots a batted ball, it counts the same in both -- plus one to denominator, no change in numerator. The only outcomes they differ on are
(1) when a batter gets a non-HR hit, which counts in the DE denominator but not at all in FP.
(2) when a fielder gets an assisted putout or an assist/putout on the bases, which counts in the FP numerator and denominator, but nowhere in DE
(3) errors that lead to extra bases, but don't turn an out into a safety

But both (1) and (2), as rates, are pretty consistent from team to team. Non-HR hits per ball in play is what BABIP measures, and it doesn't vary much at the team level. Assisted putouts per BIP is closely related to the pitching staff's strikeout rate, which I suspect is generally similar among the top college teams. (3) is relatively rare, among errors.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that DE and FP are strongly correlated; DE is essentially FP corrected for irrelevant or 'easy' chances and for BABIP above the norm.

I would imagine that in college baseball the correlation between FP and DE would be much higher than in MLB. In MLB, DE would be much more influenced by range and positioning, whereas in college, teams make a far greater number of errors, even when accounting for home park effects. I know that my college scorer never saw a booted grounder that wasn't a hit, but there were still many more booted grounders than in MLB.

Schmub -- I don't really have an answer for you, as that would take some more serious box score digging than I could really offer. But if you'd like, shoot me an e-mail, and I'll do my best to pass along what Coach Mainieri has to say on the issue. Few college coaches are as gracious with their time or as thoughtful with their responses.

Anecdotally, I think the team underwent a learning curve when Mainieri opted to move Hollander to start the freshman at shortstop, and I think LeMahieu went through a learning curve playing shortstop in the SEC. But he looked solid in Omaha, and you know those outfielders could always go get the ball. Mitchell takes some weird routes sometimes, granted, but is there a better athlete in college baseball?

As promised, Schmub, I just got off the phone with Mainieri, talking about his team this spring. I did talk to him about last year's defense, and asked if he saw a noticeable defensive up-tick after the Georgia series. His response that the defense last year was the most consistent element of the team -- moreso even than the vaunted offense. He said the Georgia series in particular was the one weekend he remembers his defense falling apart, but besides that, he thought it stayed consistent all year.

Now I'm not sure if the numbers would bear that out or not, but it's hard to get a more insider perspective than that.

To Mike and fellow inquiring minds: the current plan is that I will contribute a college article per week here at BP. This is my only writing commitment this spring, so I'm hoping we can continue doing some unique things like today's piece. If there's an uncovered side of college baseball that anyone wants explored, please let me know. Thanks for the interest.

When Voros McCracken published his big essay on defense + pitching, I remember something he found, and a lot of the people who wrote related articles during the heyday of the "do-pitchers-control-whether-a-ball-hit-into-play-is-an-out" discussion found as well:

Pitchers in lower levels *are* able to significantly influence whether or not a ball hit into play is converted into an out. And it gets more extreme the further down the ladder you go. Good pitchers in AAA have better BABIP compared to the league than good pitchers in the MLB. In AA, the effects are even greater, and they're greater in single A, and in rookie ball. All the way down to college ball.

The reason most people suggested was that all major leaguers can hit major-league hitting, or they don't stick around very long. However, prospects, organizational fodder, and college players may have any ability to hit good pitching, so they can get totally overpowered, flail at balls, and hit a very high percentage of pop-ups or soft hit grounders.

I'm worried that this is showing up in your numbers. If, for example, Duke has some really good pitchers, with hard fastballs or good breaking stuff or very good location or some combination of those qualities, then they may be creating a high percentage of pop-ups and easy ground balls, thus providing a higher percentage of easy plays for their defense. Within a league where there is such a large range of talent-levels, I'm not sure DER really has much more to tell us about defensive skill than FPct. Or ERA, for that matter.

James, I think you make some valid points, but in a sense, I believe these results actually work against your thesis. Without question, it would help if we could team these numbers with the results of the boys at CollegeSplits -- it would be important to know if the Duke pitchers were merely inducing the least number of line drives in college baseball, for example. But until we have uniform transparency of statistics in college baseball, we're going to have to make do with what's available, and that's why I was thrilled to be able to put this together.

The problem I see with your theory is that this list doesn't contain programs that were flush in pitching. Duke did not have a great pitching staff, and considering they played the majority of their games in the ACC, I think it's fair to say they were in the bottom half of the league in that regard. A team like South Carolina, who shows up at 8, considered their pitching to be the weakest element of the team. I just spoke with Paul Mainieri at LSU, a team that just missed the top 25, and he gave all the credit to his all-world defensive outfield and steady, solid infield.

I'm not sure I would have published this if, in the end, the top teams were merely a restated list of the top pitching staffs. But as I said, Rice pitchers struck out 23% of the batters they faced, and yet they were significantly below average in DER last year.

I'm confident saying that this statistic is measuring defense first, and while pitching is going to have an effect on that -- it's unavoidable -- I don't think it's putting too much, as I say with FPct, noise into the numbers.